A Modular Approach to Teaching and Learning of Virtual Collaboration

Virtual collaboration has become an essential part of how work gets done in organizations today and knowing how to collaborate virtually is an important skill for success. Courses with team projects may include a virtual component, but rarely is there any explicit education on how best to engage in virtual collaboration. The topic is a complex one that takes into account a wide variety of issues, including behavioral, social, and technological dimensions. Our research addresses this need by developing modules for teaching and learning of virtual collaboration. The modules are based on underlying theory in this field and have practical application in education and training. We describe an initial application of the modular approach to teaching and learning of virtual collaboration that took place during the Fall Semester 2008

Augmenting Online Learning with Real-Time Conferencing: Experiences from an International Course

This paper reports experiences from the use of real-time conferencing to support synchronous class interaction in an international online course. Through combination of video, audio, application sharing and chat, the students and instructors engaged in weekly interactions in a virtual classroom. This created an environment for rich interaction, augmenting the traditional use of course repositories. Further, this gave the students hands-on experience with real-time conferencing tools which are increasingly common in the workplace. The paper also discusses experienced challenges related to combining the use of multiple synchronous communication channels and presents implications for further use of real-time conferencing in online courses

Investigating Collaborative Development Activities in a Virtual World: An Activity Theory Perspective

Contemporary virtual worlds provide unique environments in which users may collaborate in the development of shared digital artifacts. However, the ways in which such collaboration takes place is to date under researched. This paper uses an activity theory perspective to analyze the development activities of two communities within the virtual world of Second Life, based on data gathered using ethnographic methods. The study reveals (1) the complimentary and diverging practices utilized by these two different communities of practice, (2) the mediating function of various tools, rules, and work roles in collaborative development activities, (3) the tensions created in such activities and the manner in which users overcome these tensions